1919 – Page 11 – Old Magazine Articles

Doughboy Uniforms: Breeches vs. Long Pants
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

It has officially been decided that the A.E.F. has grown up and must now wear pants.

A 1919 order appeared in THE STARS and STRIPES indicating that the era of army-issued olive drab knee breeches had passed and soon all American Army personnel would be issued long pants:

Experts have decided that the breeches legs shrink when wet and impede the circulation, and it is assured that the kind that he used to wear in civilian life will not cause the Doughboy cold feet…

To supply the A.E.F. until August, 2,500,000 pairs of pants have been ordered, and these, which will cost only nineteen cents a leg more than breeches did, will be of better quality than the latter.

Indian Moccasins Authorized
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

It is little remembered in our day that the Native Americans who served in the American Expeditionary Forces along the Western Front were permitted to wear moccasins in place of the regulation Pershing boot. Ethnic pandering is not a term that should come to mind; this was a high complement paid by their commanding officers for a well-respected prowess in battle. The following is a small portion from a larger article which is posted on The Native American page of this website; the entire article can be read following the link that reads A Talent for Sniping.

The Kaiser Condemned
(The Literary Digest, 1919)

A brief article published some six months after the Armistice in which the editors collected various opinion pieces from assorted German newspapers that clearly stated the deep hatred many Germans felt for their former king. Also mentioned was the possibility that the dethroned Kaiser could possibly stand trial before the court of Nations.

The rotten branch on the Hohenzollern tree must be broken off, so that the tree may once more bloom and flourish. William II is superficial, frivolous, vain, and and autocratic; a lover of pomp; proud of his money, void of seriousness; a petty worshiper of his own petty self; without one trait of greatness, a poseur, an actor, and worst of all for a ruler: a coward.

Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.

Visions of the Trenches by Otto Dix
(Artist’s Portfolio, 1919)

Attached are assorted W.W. I combat images by noted German Expressionist Otto Dix (1891 – 1969). Shortly after returning from the war, Dix threw away his uniform, locked himself in his print studio and began to diligently labor over a vast number of etching plates – all baring the dreadful images of trench warfare that had been burned into his memory during the course of living his beastly, troglodyte existence in the trenches of France.

The U.S. Army Trench Knives
(America’s Munitions, 1919)

The American Army contracted two varieties of fighting knives throughout the First World War:

• the 1917 model trench knife with the nine inch triangular blade, and

• the 1918 Mark I trench knife with the 6.75 double-edged flat blade

The 1917 knife was the one that was carried during the war. The conflict had ended by the time it was decided to begin production on the second knife, which saw some use during W.W. II.

This article is illustrated with pictures of both and goes into some detail at to the manufacturers and the various matters that the Quartermaster Corps considered in weighing their decision as to what should be involved in designing such fighting knives.

Commander of the Lost Battalion
(The Stars and Stripes, 1919)

The following article presented a brief account of the deeds of Major Charles W. Whittlesey of the 308th Infantry Regiment ( Seventy Seventh Division) and why he was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Shortly after the war Whittlesey would commit suicide.

In December of 1918, Lt. Colonel Whittelesey was highly praised in VANITY FAIR …

Theater Intermissions and Prohibition
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Prohibition has been pretty rough on everybody, but there is no class of people which it has hit so hard as the theater-goers. The Federal Amendment has completely wrecked their evenings. It isn’t so bad while the show is going on; the blow falls between the acts. In happier times the intermissions were the high spots of the evening…

With pin-point accuracy, Vanity Fair was able to identify the new minority-victim class that emerged from America’s unfortunate experiment with Prohibition: Broadway theater enthusiasts (It might be argued that the real victims were American bar tenders, many of whom high-tailed it over to Europe where they established a number of American-style bars).

The attached page from the magazine can be classified as humor and is illustrated with six great sketches by Edith Plummer.

Read other articles from 1919.

A Cartoonist with the U.S. Army in Germany
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

A few cartoons by the illustrator George Wright (1872 – 1951) depicting the American Third Army during it’s 1919 occupation of Germany.

The Paris Purses for Autumn
(Vogue Magazine, 1919)

A VOGUE editorial from the Fall of 1919 praising the swank of six nifty Parisienne purses -each created from different materials and each displaying the industrious fingers of skilled craftsmen.

Click here to read about happy Hollywood’s discovery of plastic surgery…

The Rosettis
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Shortly after the death of William Michael Rossetti
(1829 – 1919), Welsh poet and essayist Arthur Symons
(1865 – 1945) wrote this essay remembering the man, his brother (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) and the friendship that the two shared with poets George Meredith and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

The Aggressive
(U.S. Army Study, 1919)

An assortment of opinions gleaned from various interviews with German soldiers who all made remarks about the naked aggressiveness shared by the A.E.F.:

The French would not advance unless sure of gaining their objectives while the American infantry would dash in regardless of all obstacles and that while they gained their objectives they would often do so with heavy loss of life.

Chez Poiret: the Hot Social Ticket in the Paris of 1919
(Vogue Magazine, 1919)

The post-war publicity machine of French fashion designer Paul Poiret was in fine form when he saw to it that his minions invited the Paris-based correspondent from American VOGUE to his house for a grand fete, seated her comfortably, drink in hand, right on the fifty-yard line in order that she might be better able to report to her handlers back in New York that Paris was back.

The correspondent who was not invited was the fashion journalist from FLAPPER MAGAZINE; American flappers did not approve of Poiret one bit. Click here to read what they thought of him.

Russian Modernism After the Revolution
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Art alone survives the earthquake shocks of revolution, and Russian art has been doubly secure because of it’s deep-rooted imagination and it’s passionate sincerity.

That was the word from Oliver M. Sayler writing from Moscow as it starved during the Summer of 1919. Sayler, known primarily for his writings on Russian theater from this period, wrote enthusiastically about the Russian Suprematist Casimir Malyevitch, Futurist David Burliuk and The Jack of Diamonds Group; believing deeply in the Russian Revolution, he wrote not a word about how the Soviets mistreated the modern artists of Russia.

Finding the Graves of American Aviators
(Literary Digest, 1919)

The difficult task of wandering the war-torn countryside of Europe in search of fallen World War I American pilots fell to a U.S. Army captain named E.W. Zinn. A combat pilot himself, Zinn had roamed France, Belgium and Germany interviewing the local population to see what they knew of American crash sites:

Many times he has come upon a grave with a rude cross on which was scrawled:

‘Unidentified American Aviator’ or ‘Two Unidentified American Aviators’

Captain Zinn has found that in a great many cases American fliers were buried either by the Germans or by civilians with no mark of identification left on them.

Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.

Keeping German Diplomats Safe in Paris
(Popular Mechanics, 1919)

In light of the overwhelming hostility toward Germans, whether they come to Paris to sign a peace treaty or for other reasons, the Parisian Gendarmes thought it best to enclose their hotel with palisade-style fencing, which they hoped would serve the dual purpose of keeping them in as much as it would serve to keep hostile natives out.
A photo of the barricade illustrates the article.